Paved With Gold
by Subia Jasmine
Summary: She’d never believed the streets to be paved with gold... Nadine's gradual absorption into New York City following the death of her parents. The Wild Party: LaChiusa canon.
1. Lost

A/N: This is a series of chapters on Nadine's life prior to canon. Anyone you recognize belongs to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa, cameo-OC's belong to me. Kindly review

The three of them sat in silence, like a painting lit by firelight. The girl was curled up in her chair with a blanket drawn around her shoulders, light blue dress drawn around her knees A woman knelt beside her, mousy brown waves of hair fading to grey, slowly rubbing her back. The woman's husband stood with his back to them, arms crossed, head bowed as though in sleep. The girl watched the telephone beside her caregivers like a predator, a deadly animal. Tears dried on her face like ice and, periodically, the woman beside her would embrace her and each time, the girl would lay her head against her chest and wait.

She had been with them for a day and a half, after being left alone for three. A police car from Hopewell Junction had brought her to them. No one knew where her parents were.

With a start, the phone rang beside the woman, shattering the composure of the room. The girl let out a cry, strangled it, and fell silent. The woman made a convulsive movement toward it. Her husband closed the space in two strides and picked it up. "Yes," was the only word he uttered. He took up his coat from the hook by the door, and left to brave the night.

"Have they found them?" The child asked the woman. The woman watched her husband go with a pale mask of recognition. She turned to the girl with shaking hands.

"Get some sleep, Sunny," with well-concealed panic she took the girl in hand and gave her a place in her bed.

They were lost, Marie and Anthony both. The doctor was met at the door by a cop who knew the family, whose first words of concern were for the child. He was very young. Having known her all her life he was, nonetheless, old enough to remember Amabel Jeanette, to know the name and to remember the silence that met Marie and Anthony when they learned she, their eldest daughter, had run away. And he feared the silence that would greet their deaths.

The doctor, with a hand on the cop's shoulder, moved him aside. "Let me see them." The cop shook his head.

_Sir, I wouldn't dare to hope._ He had driven the girl to the doctor in Poughkeepsie, had seen her cry, had held her hand. He had seen her as she'd lived, and he'd feared also that she never would grow up.

He settled his hat on his head as the doctor was called away, and he thought about her sadly for a moment. He knew she would not be able to stay here, though there were people who might have taken her in. Marie had dreamed of reconciliation with her first daughter for years, and her part of her husband's will would be carried out as such, even if it came at Nadine's expense.

The doctor stood behind cold stone and waited, not daring to hope. He was not disappointed. They were lost, both of them, as all had feared and none denied. _Lost _was the word he would use when he went home to their daughter. Lost implied that they may yet be found. Their daughter had been raised to believe as much.

But he did not return just yet. In the dark he went to his office, and worked deliberately through the files to find her, _Jones_, but she had married now, hadn't she…? He would have to hope for the best. For the first hour he mourned her mother, and then he mourned her, and then the sister she did not know. And he began making his arrangements.

The girl awoke with a start. She didn't know the time, and it took her a moment in the purple twilight to remember where she was. Roxanne, the doctor's wife, sewing in the window, looked up and held out her hand. Nadine pulled herself up straight, standing on the edge of the bed, arms around her shoulders, self-embracing and wretched. Her face was worried, pale, "I want Ishmael," she said to the woman, eyes glazed over. When Roxanne ushered her back to bed she did not fight her, but lay down and held her head and shook.

It was blessed that the young cop had thought of her in mourning, for he was coming to see them and she had no need to fear of being alone. He came shortly before the doctor returned, early after midnight, and he was welcome, for they had known his parents and treated him. He had a pleasant, small-town manner, he was polite to Roxanne as his teacher, and kind to Nadine as his friend. They had been children together.

He sat down beside her and she laid her head in his lap, wrapping her arms around his waist, "Ishmael." She was grateful. He had been a friend to her, unimportant except in this capacity. But he meant the world to her now.

"No worries, honey, I'm here."

"I know." And she fell asleep, glad of the familiarity. Her parents, years ago, had teased that one day they would marry, that he could protect her. Ishmael, small as he would become in her life, could briefly share her grief. He stroked her hair and promised Roxanne he would come to the wake.

Small comforts in a loved life. She slept more easily.

The church, shadows in pale sandstone. At the child's request, the funeral began at sunrise. She sat on the steps with the doctor and his wife, combing and recombing her hair, straightening and braiding with trembling, fumbling fingers. Thinking of graveyards. Thinking of her grave beside them. _"Consider friend, as you pass by…"_

Keeping vigil by candlelight, watching the smoke whirl up into the sky. No moon tonight. She'd heard legends of nights like this. Black words and crimson doings… Nothing could be seen of the girl but her black dress and her pale, silent face above the collar of the coat she wore.

The faces would arrive in an hour. Faces from Mother's housewarming parties, Father's piano recitals. Fat and bearing children of their own. Children who knew her, who knew these deaths, more intimately than they cared to acknowledge. Children who did not want to share her premature grief.

These were the mothers who cried for Marie Linda Harding. At her own grave, their children would mourn her. How she hated them. Burying her face in her knees, she kept -whispering, _"as you are now, so once was I…"_

She held in her sobs, letting out only a whimper, a thin dog's whistle of a cry, drawn tight like the skin of a drum. Dry accusation, guilt. The doctor's wife tilted her head out into the darkness. They spoke quietly, out of respect, it seemed, for the girl's grief. Near to silence, one word, a name, a question, "Amabel?"

Rough and tumble child. Petulant, very nearly pretty, the image of her face came to him as such. There was always a warning in her face. She was destined for a fall. Twenty years had passed since the last warning.

"_as I am now, you too shall be…"_

He watched an image he had of her as though he viewed a film. She, under a tree in the breeze, covered in her classmate's pilfered makeup, determinedly binding a twisted arm in fabric and setting it. _Amabel…_their last hope. "She hasn't written back," his wife whispered sadly.

"I suppose we could…" but his wife laid a hand on his arm.

"You're not as young as you once were." A sigh. "Poor devils."

"Poor child. Hardly knew a better family." Even the runaway. He'd always liked Amabel, nearly alone in a largely Catholic town. Given up. She'd come to him for money with her secret, arm carelessly bound, holding her hand to her stomach and whispering _"Don't tell mother."_

"She'll hear it enough today. Only the tragic news spreads like wildfire in Duchess."

"Prepare therefore…"

"What's she saying over there, a rosary?" Indeed the girl's fingers seemed to move along imaginary beads, imaginary memories. Indeed the words she spoke dealt with the soul of another. The light was fast approaching.

"_to follow me…"_ Nadine started as the doctor's wife took her hand.

"Enough, Sunny. Let's get you inside. There's a good girl, _'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee'…_"

"Blessed art thou amongst women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb…"

Amabel, cold limbs in her dress thrown across her husband's, arm around his neck, hair full of powder and sweat. Coming home late, she could not wake him. Eddie's head lay on her chest, and she slept heavily and dreamlessly. Eddie's weight on her heart. Too deeply to take off her pilfered makeup or a costume dress. In sleep the ripped fabric and makeup looked grotesque, far cry from the nearly pretty memory she wanted them to lock away in some attic.

One eye open as her husband shifted. Light in the sky, pulling his arm from under his wife's back. She groaned, rolling over, arms twining around his wrist, latching onto him and kissing halfheartedly. "Where's the fire, stallion, come back to bed…"

"It's almost dawn,"

"Yeah, I heard a rumor six o'clock happens twice a day, I guess it must be true." Eyes heavy and red, she rolled off the crumpled sheets, shaking powder from her hair, drink from her body, makeup from her face, "Where you off to?"

"You know," As close to sharp as he could come. Mae's face twitched. Feeling in the thin white line of her mouth.

"It's barely light in the sky," Eddie's shadow, pulling a shirt from under the bed they shared. He wrapped one arm around his wife's waist, flesh more than bone, ice more than flesh, and she held him and tugged, stretching. "Cancha stay through the night? Cold as hell froze over out there…" She'd pushed this tender moment too far. Eddie pulling away from her, sitting on their bed and pulling on a pair of worn boots. Served him well, cracked leather, soft and sturdy, dark, deep brown. Grey in the feeble light.

"Wish you'd written them back." Cold release, drawing his body from the lukewarm of hers. "We'll be back by dark."

"Dawn to dusk on a train leading nowhere." Mae laughed feebly. She turned. He caught her hand and held her eyes.

"You know we have to do this." Mute nod, fingers curling in, "You coming?"

Turning away. "No. No need for that." _No need?_

"Where would they be?"

"St. Anne's." she said softly. Eddie let her go, took his coat from the chair by the door, and left without another word, thinking that, at least, she might have ridden with her kin on the train.

Whispers all the way from the train station. In the city, only staring, muttering as he strode away because, perhaps, they feared more than they disdained. But here it was frigid, from the conductor who refused to take his ticket to a stranger on the street, who would not tell him where Mae's sister could be found.

The doctor and his wife stood with the child at the door of the church, shaking hands. The child stood solemn, blue eyes vacant from her tears. When those she barely knew shook her for her grief she went limp in their arms like a doll. Yes, she knew what fine people they were… Yes, she knew her own memories. Heeding the sun in the east, her mourning was drawing back. _Lovely flowers, lovely lilies for the headstones…_ One moment of joy when Ishmael took her hand and knew how she would cry when she was alone. She kissed him fleetingly on the cheek and hoped she would see him again…

Then a flash of time, two broken ends of the day… Nadine was kneeling, dirt on her torn, black stockings, pulling the petals in a frenzy from each of the white lilies, dropping the petals onto the coffins, slid closed over their faces while she slept. Her hands bled against the ground. _"Prepare, therefore, to follow me…"_ How she wished it… how she wished it… counting seconds.

"That her?"

"More or less." A moment's hesitation, "If I could…your name?"

"Eddie Mackrel. Mae Jones is my wife. She'd 've come herself but…"

"No need."

From her place at the grave, she'd started to scream. The doctor and the man beside him went to her, Eddie kneeling heavily and taking the sides of her face in his hands. The doctor took from her shaking fingers the torn remnants of those white lilies. The girl put her hands to her face to hold in the perfume. All the while the guests at the wake stared at the shade with the girl's head in his hands, a girl he must love by obligation. And though he had to ask for her name, once he heard it he said it softly, and said it often. When she heard it she would think of those hands, holding her together as the world around her flew apart.

"You'll take her now?" the doctor registered the girl's quiet, held firmly in a stranger's hands. Eddie nodded.

"Promised to be home by dark." Her screams had ceased. She trembled only, putting to her lips the fragments of lily the doctor hadn't managed to take away. Dr. Dorsett rose from the grave, and went to Roxanne. His wife's face had hardened around the lines of her mouth. Her words reached out like the lash of a whip.

"Send him away."

"We've no choice."

"We'll keep the girl."

"Roxanne. We'll follow her parents' will. She'll go to her sister."

She turned to look at him for the first time. "What makes you believe she's changed?"

"The love and faith of her mother, I suppose. You knew Marie as well as I. The closest to God's faith on earth we found in Marie."

"A mother's love can be blind."

"Blind to fault, perhaps. Not blind to virtue. Nor to hope." His wife turned away. "Go to her, then. Make her promise to write. Hold her to that promise." She shook her head.

"You bring her here. I'll have her make no promise while he listens."

Heavy steps, back to where the girl was looking into his face. Reaching up…

"Stand by the gate now," the doctor said this over her head, "I'll have her along in a minute. Nadine, honey, Roxanne wants to tell you good-bye."

"Yes, sir."


	2. A small life

A/N: A series of pre-canon chapters focusing on Nadine and her relationships with the others in her canon. Anyone you recognize belongs to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa; any cameo-OC's belong to me. The "heed the message" lyric belongs to Shawn Colvin, and is entirely anachronistic. Enjoy.

***

She, a small life packed into a suitcase that rattled above their heads.

He, sleeping lightly, waked by the motion of the train. The girl, her hand suspended a little ways from his arm, felt fascination mix with shame. The passengers stared open threats. The girl, whispering to him, saw two boys, older than she, whispering a few seats away. "Get the conductor…" The girl felt her heart skip a beat. They were watching her now.

"Eddie?" Tugging on his sleeve. One eye slit open. "Tell me about my sister?"

"That all?" His eyes closed, murmurs heavy from sleep. He chuckled, softly, deeply. "Mae's a piece of work…"

She'd hoped for more. He heard a plaintive note in her voice when she asked him, "Was it love at first sight?"

Another chuckle, uneasy. Then something changed in his face, a muscle tightened, an instinct reared, a reflex bowed. The conductor was an unimposing man, flanked by the two boys. He faced Eddie with a sorry look in his eyes.

"We'll have someone watch her." A stranger's hand on the girl's shoulder. "Hope you understand…" _Heed the message, kill the messenger…_ Eddie thought about it. Briefly. Silent vengeance. He stood, and the girl rose with him. He looked at the two boys as he walked away, taking them casually enough by the shoulders, seating them forcefully enough to bruise. He spoke over his shoulder.

"Wait for me on the platform, Nadine. We'll find Mae, hear me?" She nodded, fast, uncertain, "There's a good girl."

The teenage boys watched him go with hate in every curve of their faces. Nadine looked away from them, watching the trees disappear. She thought of a photograph she'd seen of Mary Pickford, reached up for her suitcase and lifted it into her lap, covering the tear in her black stockings.

***

She'd never believed the streets to be paved with gold. Too many people walked them, ran them each day for the gold to last. The gold must have traveled with them. She'd never believed so many people could live on these streets, in one city, share one broad life. What she did believe stemmed from what the kind would call trust and the cruel would call ignorance. She believed in safety. She looked for Marie in every face.

One woman drew a pair of black sunglasses down the length of her jaw, snapping them contemptuously shut in a cheap imitation of Mae West. She stood at the platform's edge and looked, halfhearted and resentful, for the sister she'd never met.

A girl stumbled and eased her way through the crowd, blown like a leaf in the tumult of people, dressed in black like a breeze dark with rain. As she fell past Mae she grabbed her arm to keep from falling. Mae threw her off.

"Go back to school, little girl."

Eddie watched for the breeze-of-black mourning clothes. He pushed through the crowds, and just as his wife, cigarette in hand, flung an arm around his waist, he had found the girl and done the same.

"Don't wander, Nadine, what if I'd not found you?" He looked behind him to meet his wife's eyes. "Kept my promise, Mae. Let's get outta here." Mae was to fend for herself, he kept hold of the girl's arm the whole way, she only slightly bewildered at the solidity of his concern for her. He kept himself between the sisters as they moved through the rush of people, and she had a vague feeling he was denying them an introduction until he no longer had to act as mediator.

By the time they left the station and he was reaching down to take change from his pocket, there was the mark of a bruise on her elbow. Handing the change to his wife, a 50-centpiece fell to the pavement like rain. "Get a bus and bring her home, Mae. I'll be along."

"Where you off to?" Turning through the sea of people, charging back the way he came. "Eddie!" Already lost. Distinguishable in the throes of New York City, but lost to her. Mae turned to the wall and kicked it. Nadine picked up the 50-centpiece and went to Mae's right side. Mae saw the bruise, she knew it. She needed her to justify his form of kindness to her, but all she said was, "He and his pound of flesh."

It was the first thing she'd said to her sister, looking into her eyes and seeing only competition, favoritism, accusation. "Suppose you hate me, huh, little girl?"

_Why should she?_ "Cat gotcha tongue, kid, that was a question." She shook her head rapidly. "Get on, then, let's getcha back downtown. You're about to get knocked down a peg or two, little girl."

Mae boarded the bus before the rush, leaving Nadine to stand in the front. Out one of the windows she thought she saw Eddie across a street, under a streetlight, arms entwined with a woman.

"I have a name," she whispered, too soft to be heard.

***

There was a way of patching together broken ends of time. Nadine, in her new home, rarely slept in her bed. She stayed awake by the window and looked up at the sky, hoping to see stars beyond the veil of poison light. Most often she would fall asleep on her knees, come morning the cold would tear at her, but some nights she did not sleep at all, preferring a daze in which she could see starlight to the visions of open coffins that would come when she slept.

Eddie had hoped his wife would be the one to guide her sister back to bed on those nights, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Mae was intensely afraid of the judgment personified by the child.

"There's a good girl," taking her arms, leading her. Gentle with her as with a sleepwalker. _Don't wake her, don't wake her._

***

_She'd only wanted to brush it._ Stealing forward to where Mae sat at her vanity, holding out her hands. She'd seen Marie for an instant, auburn and grey waves she'd braid together with fingers that flew…then the sound as Mae turned in her seat and struck out at her hand. That night she stayed awake.

She'd been with them a month when she turned fourteen. December 18, 1928. Eddie stood in her doorway as she knelt by the bed, whispering the first few words of a prayer, lifting her head, opening her eyes, and whispering those first few words until they filled with tears.

She was in early mourning still, grief coming to her like a brutal lover and leaving no part of her alone, untorn. She had no will to build up strength against the force of her own submission. She cowered in its wake. Outside touch, Eddie could do nothing for her. In their familiarity with their charge, his wife grew only in fear. But as her fear gathered strength, so did her husband's defiance to it. He began to resent the impossibility of middle ground between the sisters. The child could not stop grieving and nor could she share it. But why, why should she have to?

He took her shoulder, shook her from it, just shy of roughly. She kept her eyes on him at first, then let her head fall back. She spread her arms up, over her head, taking in the chill light from the window. "I'm fourteen today." It was a shrinking offer, those words. Her grief made her fearful that the kindness she knew was in the graves with the remnants of her lilies. Eddie gave an uncertain nod. Eyes darting, the girl looked back into her hands, clasped like a locket, and shaking. Her keeper took her hand. She looked up.

"I bet you're a pretty thing when you smile." She reached across her face to brush away a strand of hair. Shy at the compliment, for a moment it looked as though she might. Smile. Then Mae, freezing in the door, turning away, muttering about getting coffee. Eddie rose, but as he turned to follow her, he saw Nadine take a brush from her suitcase. Holding it, spinning it through her fingers like a ladies' fan.

***

One smoky, green eye between the door and the chain lock. Beckoning. Dry, pistol words from behind the wood. "Mama'll put on a pot of bourbon."

"You're an angel, Mad."

"Nah, I'm the way the devil enters when you drink. Get inside, layabout."

"Vagabond."

"That's my business. What brings you to the slums of my doorstep t'day, and will it be rum or gin?" She turned on her heel and left the door open. The one thing Madeleine was meticulous about, and only in theory, was this apartment. By implication, her alcohol. As she passed him she threw her blue scarf around his neck. "Rum or gin?

"Gin."

"Sounds like I'm in for it today, ain't I? Intrigue, scandal, endless windbagging… you finally left Mae?" Groan. "Well, you oughtta. Any woman you put your roots down with better be a damn good drunk, or she's nothing but trouble to your health." All but throwing the bottle to him across the table.

"She tries."

"She fails, Champ. Remember Kate's last party? She got up on the sill and screamed something about having three tits? No? Ah, well, might have been me, who can keep it straight anymore." She clapped him on the back jovially, trying not to think about what he would say. She disapproved only slightly of the drinking, and only because it had led to some nasty incidents with his wife at past gatherings. She let him take the lion's share of the gin. "Spill it, then, you've got your drink. What's on your mind?"

"Remember a few years back, when Mae got pregnant?"

"Vividly." Madeleine grimaced, rocking back on the legs of the chair. "You married her. God knows why. It wasn't yours."

"You don't know that."

Shrug. "Neither do you. She pregnant again? That why you showed up?" He shook his head, "Jesus Christ, you're the only man I know who's harder to talk to drunk than sober. Gimme that." She took a swig of the gin that remained, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. Eddie balled up the scarf and threw it back to her.

"Mae's… Mae's kid sister came in, from out of town…"

"She has a sister?" Madeleine tipped the chair back against the wall, balancing on the two back legs, "You mean, she was born to a mother and there's somethin' in her veins other than cheap booze and hormones? I'll be damned, how do ya like that?"

He set his foot on the seat of the chair and kicked. Madeleine went down in a flurry of color and curses. In a second she was back on her feet, spinning her chair around so she faced him, looking genuinely intrigued.

"Where's she from?"

"Duchess."

"Very out-of-town…" Madeleine mused. "And you brought her up after the pregnancy scare…why?"

"She's just a kid. I didn't even know she existed 'till a month ago. We got a letter from some doctor up in Hopewell Junction, saying Mae's parents'd passed, and would we be able to come make some arrangements for their daughter… And I ask Mae what that's about and she doesn't even bat an eye. Didn't come up for the funerals… nothing… doesn't want anything to do with her now she's here."

"Hey. If Mae doesn't want her, give her to me."

"Mad."

"What? For her sake, _her _future, your sanity and my fulfillment in life."

"She's Mae's kin, the way I see it, she's my kin too."

"So tell her as much. I'm sure she's feeling lonely when you become the only person in the house worth talkin' to."

"Be fair." He grinned.

"Oh I'm not being unfair. Just unkind. But you understand my concern. Bring 'er by, when you get a chance. What's she like?"

"Real quiet."

"Men." Madeleine rolled her eyes. "Got a lot on her mind, is all. Talk to her about her dreams, Champ. No better way to a woman's heart." She took the gin bottle back to its place under the cupboard, pausing as she went to tap him meaningfully on the chest.

He thought about that on his way home, walking in the cold once Madeleine threw him out. To clear his head, she told him, walking him halfway there, drifting into a bar with a coded knock, and vanishing.

***

They were washing dishes when he joined them, side by side and not touching, the girl's dress soaking, her hair pulled up from her face. He and his wife touched together at the cheek but did not kiss. The girl watched them over her shoulder, hands in the scalding water. Softened, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"What'd you think New York was gonna do for you, Nadine?" It was through these half-jokes that he'd learned to speak to her. Nothing too serious, too sharp. She was just beginning to strengthen at the broken places.

"This the 'hopes and dreams' speech, baby? What, you been to see Madeleine?"

"Who's Madeleine?" asked the girl, eyes on Eddie. Eddie grinned at his wife, who groaned audibly and muttered something about aspirin.

"My true love and savior."

"Murderous lesbian stripper who wants to have his children." Mae amended, loudly, snapping her fingers against her thigh to call back her hired help.

"There's that." Eddie conceded, but as Nadine turned away he caught her by the hair, "Mae give you this?" She shook her head, "Where'd it come from, then?"

"There was a bouquet of roses on Broadway," she whispered to him. Eddie bent down to her as her eyes brightened, "In a store window for Christmas. This was tied round the stem," she pulled the ribbon down from her limp hair and wound it round his wrist.

"What'd you dream of having here?" he asked, cuffing her cheek. Just a little too sharply. He felt the ribbon slip from his hands. She was turning away already with strange wistfulness. Mae kept her eyes on the dishes, scalding water running over the rim of the same cup over, and over, and over…

"Baby, how many times you gonna wash that out?"

"Not sure yet, how many times would really piss you off?" Tone bitterly laced.

"Nadine?"

"My mother…"

"Marie," interjected Mae, tone hard as cut glass. Eddie ignored her.

"…she always wanted a ballerina for a daughter…" _Slam_ of the overflowing cup onto the stack of dishes. Mae did not want her to answer. "…she always thought I could make it here…"

Mae gave a cold laugh. _So, a chorus girl wouldn't cut it for her?_ She didn't speak.

"Name in lights, streets of gold…" she put a hand behind her hand and posed. Weakly. "All that jazz."

Mae's hand shook, the bowl unsteady. Cut glass shattered on the floor. Mae picked up the pieces, fragmented, cheap imitation china crisscrossing patterns on her hands until there was blood. Eddie moved the girl aside and picked his wife up from the waist, away from the sharp, glittering edges. Mae's eyes glimmered in the absence of tears.

"Who the hell do you think you are, little girl?" she spoke evenly.

"Get to that aspirin, Mae, it'll help you sleep," Nadine stayed in the doorway, "Don't listen to her," he added to the girl, "go on, tell me more." She shook her head. Damaged goods, faintly… "Don't be like that. Tell me."

Nadine went to her knees so she was at eye level with him.

"I just…I wish I knew what I had to learn."

"To what, kid?"

"Be part of the circuit. Like you and Mae." Eddie gave a cracked, harsh sort of laugh, "I'll bet you know everyone worth knowing here," her lips quivered into a smile.

"Oh, child, dream on. You wouldn't like it on these stages. Dance yourself lame and blind for an audience that could vanish tomorrow."

"Have you been blinded?"

"Not yet," he pounded the chair leg beside him. Three times, "But this ain't my circuit, strictly speaking. I'm from a little further downtown."

"Where?"

"Show you tomorrow." Distracted, smiling at nothing in particular, she nodded.

***

She could have gone through the front, he realized later. No one knew her. Though once asked for her guardian they would have felt they knew everything worth knowing.

Nonetheless, out of habit they went around the back. There was a young man at the door, who had once admired him and still liked him, though this was tinged with rueful disapproval. Going through the door as the man nodded him on, he remembered it had been five years ago that the bouncer had told him about the message from Mae, the woman who was now his wife.

Through glass he saw the ring, through rafters and his own past he let her see it. Through the back door of his life. The bouncer alone remembered him for his glory. The management saw him in terms of his transgression. The situation and its consequences, the sacrifice he had made, were what he concerned himself with, for he could not change them. He would not try.

She was impressed. She tried to imagine the circles below, of the fighters, of the crowd…close to opening time the other workers, most of them black, would watch the fights from the rafters. Most would drink, fights would break out among them, drowned by the noise of the crowd, most of them white.

She didn't see that yet. The crowds in her mind were always white. She was naïve yet about the rafters. Nevertheless, she held the fighters in high regard.

As they walked home, she took his arm, made brazen by her keeper's downtown stage. She imagined he had been happy.


	3. Much of anything

A/N: A series of pre-canon chapters focusing on Nadine and her relationships with the others in her canon. Anyone you recognize belongs to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa; any cameo-OC's, (i.e. Harper Greene-angel) belong to me. Kindly review.

* * *

She met a few of them over time, the fellow performers, fallen stars, rising stars, flatlines, ghosts. A number of them had been lovers, some currently, others many years ago. Yet they were a family, and it was a long time before she understood what that meant to them. The man at the door, dressed soberly, with a long, studious, quiet face, was Oscar Caligheri, by birth, and Oscar D'Armano, by choice.

"He's gotta man uptown," Mae explained, indifferent as she shook a bottle of red polish. "He took his name," Eddie explained.

"Why?"

Eddie and Mae exchanged a grim, knowing look. Phil D'Armano was a force to be considered. Avoided, if at all possible, rather than reckoned with. He was Harlem-bred, with a smattering of art in his blood, and he used professionalism as a substitute for passion. Awhile back, he had been obsessively in love with a woman they called Queenie. It was a long story; Eddie brushed off the girl's questions.

There were others: Isaac Greene-angel, a two-bit funnyman and accordionist, and his wife, a dark Armenian dancer named Harper, with a cruel face and a vivid imagination. Their daughter was a thin, sharp-shouldered blonde just older than Nadine, named Suzanne. Couples were popular Vaudeville attractions, and many crossed paths with each other. Harper, an old comrade of Mae's, merged with them once on tour, and Nadine was introduced to her daughter.

Suzanne, for her part, was frail and unremarkable, with a talent born of a transitory stage life of speaking out under the lights. But in person she never seemed to have much to say. With a feeble constitution and a habit of closing in on herself when spoken to, she was not suited for the life she led. Harper was rumored to beat her when she fell ill.

Suzanne was nervous when she spoke with Nadine and Eddie, bowing her shoulders, lowering her head, shrugging, putting all her weight to the side, clasping one wrist behind her back with the opposite hand.

It was accepted by the women, chattering ferociously about old friends and stale gossip, that the men and the girls would suspend their own worlds. Isaac had spoken in blunt, broken English about a car dealership that had just been robbed, and his daughter, set apart from her parents, crouched into the dust and drew five circles, each intertwined with the next. Nadine squatted beside her, took a twig that lay in one of the circles, and traced a line. Suzanne tensed up.

"Don't!" she told her, horrified, "They won't be able to get back through!" Hurriedly, she turned her back on the rest of them, slid down onto her knees, and rubbed out the line Nadine had drawn.

"Almost curtain, Mae." The reminder came after a long, lone while, and Nadine stood up gratefully. Eddie pulled her in close, "I'll find someone to watch Dine." This shouted over his shoulder to his wife, who waved, and took Harper's arm.

Nadine smiled at Eddie, "You couldn't wait to get away."

"Walk faster," was all he said.

***

The theater was huge, but not in the way she'd been expecting. It was not cavernous, but labyrinthine. Many passages seemed to lead down to the principals' dressing rooms but in the end they met up in the same narrow course, after which the performers could part company and find their signature ways to the stage. Nadine was crushed tight to her brother's side with her nimble steps just barely in his way. She hurried to keep up and rode his stride like a small wave. She barely reached his chest. The posse was on tour for three weeks in Detroit; flamboyant and immoveable transitory tent cities had sprung up around the theaters and Eddie was steering his wife's kid sister through the leering, cavernous mouth of the theater, dodging infiltrating vendors and late performers. The passages smoothed by the trails of people, Eddie pulled Nadine through the crowds. His wife was busy onstage, by profession a drunken Jewish wife and a drunken center-stage chorus girl of the dressed-up brothels. And he had a curtain to make.

He'd intended to leave the child with his wife's friend Kate, but she hadn't made the tour; though the crowds back in New York were screaming her name, the lowly circle of friends that had flocked to her had yet to find out about the newest Vaudeville triple-threat. "The fastest legs in lights", proclaimed the newspapers, recycling the old headline of the tabloid press. So a star was made.

Now was a time to call in a favor. So, instead, now he hurried to steep stop outside the dressing room and pounded the door. Inside the door a boisterous voice broke into a colorful string of swearing, and there was the sound of something sizable being thrown against it. The door wrenched open and Eddie, nudging his sister forward alongside him, turned up his dashing smile a few degrees between charming and mocking and held out his arms.

"C'mon, Venus, don't be talkin' to your old friend like that. Put the shoe down before you put out someone's eye, it ain't becoming of a lady."

The creature before him shook back a sheet of deep scarlet hair and greeted Eddie with a laugh that had the deep vibrating ring of brass before grabbing him up in a hug that looked, and sounded, quite painful. The two slapped each other on the back and the stream of conversation that followed was garbled, but seemed to consist chiefly of cheery insults. The woman, though she wore only one of her dominatrix black heels, stood very nearly at eye level with the former champ. Her upper arms were just beginning to freckle with age, and Nadine saw solid muscle clenched over Eddie's back. She instinctively tried to make herself seem as small as possible. This wasn't difficult, but she wanted nothing in her stance to imply a challenge. The woman broke away from Eddie with a hearty slap on the back of the ribs, and she pushed up the man's face with scarlet-taloned fingers. Nadine had the distinct feeling that this woman, or force, or whatever she was, was the only one Eddie would have let get away with such flamboyant lack of reverence.

"Status report, Champ, how's monogamy treatin' ya? There's a line I haven't seen before," she commented, letting go of his chin and casting a double-take over his shoulder, "Who's the morsel?"

"Mad, Nadine, Mae's kid sister. Dine, the incomprehensible Madeleine True, nearly famous pseudo-intellectual stripper in Vaudeville-" Madeleine True had punched him sharply in the chiseled shoulder.

"And the there's you, Champ, world-famous meathead and loved by women, men, dykes, and himself-" Eddie, his arm around her shoulder, smacked the side of the woman's head without appearing to move. She shoved him with one generous hip and then she bent down to the girl, who took a few hasty steps back and drew one of those great, roaring laughs from the woman.

"Oh, step on up, honey, lemme get a good look." Abruptly, she seized the girl's hand and twirled her until she spun to a stop, "Mae got shortchanged on looks in this family. Kid, step on into the lights, you get the right angle and you look like an attractive midget. Champ, ain't 'cha got a curtain to make? I'll take care of the kid."

Nadine was already throwing frantic glances at her brother, who kept one broad hand in her hair as he caught Madeleine's waist and murmured thanks in her ear. Without her great, shadowed protected she felt lost as she stared up at the woman, still dressed in her threadbare but well-loved robe of royal navy blue and gold. In its former life it might have belonged to a queen. Nadine craned her neck up to the woman's face and the first cohesive thought she verbalized beyond a squeal was, "You're… very tall…"

Madeleine shrugged and bent the leg that ended in the gothic heel to stand flat-footed. Both set of wicked nails were painted that same, disquieting blood-red, "Ah, it's the shoes."

Of course, it had nothing to do with the shoes, but as the crowed thickened around the corridor, Madeleine swore and dashed back into the screens around the dressing room, grabbing a handful of makeshift curtain. Nadine, through the streaming hustle outside, followed in and crouched on the opposite side of the curtain, at eye level with a long scar that began on Madeleine's ankle. A minute passed in relative silence and the Madeleine tumbled out of the curtain, half-immersed in a swelling black bodice, and taking a green jacket from where it lay crumpled on an upturned chair.

"So, tell me, kid," said Madeleine from the hand mirror, a bobby pin between her teeth, "Can you sing?"

Nadine looked up, and shrugged, "I guess so."

"Dance?"

Again she shrugged. She'd taken ballet at her mother's side for as long as she could remember. Madeleine chuckled rather bitterly as she pinned up her scarlet hair. "Yeah, well, in Vaudeville you gotta do it all. But here's the trick; no one specializes. Long as you do it all, doesn't really matter if you're any good. Not to go on against your sister, honey, but the act she's doing now with the Jersey accent is her only real claim to fame. Ask any of the other chorus girls."

Privately, Nadine agreed, but said nothing. Madeleine took her brush and hurriedly powdered her face. "Come onstage with me after my set. I wanna show you something."

***

"What about Eddie?"

"He's got three shows tonight and until then he's left you in my capable claws. So kid, here it is, humble as it stands." She made a grandly ironic sweep of her arm across the bare wood and remaining drunk settling in for the night. "Come on out with me. Tread the tread of the Prima Donna you may yet become. How's it feel? Your first catwalk in Vaudeville?"

The girl smiled and stretched her hands up toward ragged curtain ropes. "Perfect. More than perfect."

"So, show me something."

Nadine stumbled and looked back. The woman seemed to have lessened in ferocity in a few hours. She did four shows a day on tour, and then there were always a few slobbering drunks whose hard-ons were obstructing the blood flew to their brains who failed to see the feminist gold chain on her neck or the women on her arm she had to deal with. So in truth, the lack of viciousness was mere exhaustion, but she was also starting to take a liking to the shy little ingénue that was Mae's charge.

"Show me something, honey."

"Show you-?"

Madeleine waved, before realizing the girl needed more explicit direction. "A dance step. The first steps of your solo act."

The girl stepped forward and raised her arms to shoulder height, as though embracing some invisible friend loosely, and she looked at the veteran performer for confirmation. Madeleine snapped her crimson nails, and then her long neck. Nadine heard a crack. "Not here, love. Out on center. Get out there."

She obeyed, though at every shaking step she looked back over her shoulder at the woman leaning against the drapery. She raised her arms to half with shaking unconsciousness and pointed her toes, sweeping her leg behind her in a turn. She quivered to a balanced stop and Madeleine bid her on. Legs aching, she sat on the floorboards and then sprawled back to watch the girl's eager-to-please steps and shy rhythms.

After a few minutes she rolled over onto her knees and stood. "We'll be back, I'm sure. But I don't spend more time under those lights than necessary. Come on, kid, I gotta freshen up."

Back in the familiar curtains, she swept up her handful of cosmetics. "Against my hardened will, honey, I'm impressed. Your sister know you can dance?"

"Not really."

"You ever show her?"

She hesitated. Mae had made her put-upon state blindingly clear from her first glance at the child through dark glasses and smoke. Nadine had thought she'd looked like a cigarette model. When she'd confided her stage dreams to Mae, a conversation where neither involved had any experience in being a sister, Mae took the dish she was drying with shaking hands and tight ashen lips. She set it on the stack with unnecessary force and went to sleep early, leaving her to her husband's care. If she knew her sister could dance, all the more reason to keep away.

"No," Nadine admitted, "No, never."

Again Madeleine swept her arm impressively, inviting the girl to seize all the poorly lit stages in the world. She finished powdering and shifted back, swinging her leg over the chair back so she sat backwards, facing the girl on an angle.

"Doesn't sound like you show her much of anything to me, hon."

"I guess not," the girl murmured. Madeleine crossed her ankle over her thigh, rested one forearm on the splintered wood and turned back to that forgotten powder puff and the mirror.

"Meaning this with all love and appreciation for both a fellow member of the trade and the wife of a dear friend, but Mae's an ignorant slut."

She said this with succinct and definite wit. That was the deeply masculine force in her that spoke with contempt against the underhanded, the passive-aggressive, that felt an angry regret for the victims and spurred them to action at a head. It was a blunt force that the little girl was not supposed to agree with but sought protection behind nonetheless. Madeleine sat very still and she seemed to sense the girl's awkward catch between truth and imagined loyalty, because she stood up and patted Nadine's shoulder as she slid into black flats, street shoes. She made one casual attempt to heal the deep sting left by her words.

"I'm getting a filter. Don't listen to me. And this is the shit that comes out when I'm sober. We got time before Eddie comes back for you," Her eyes rested on a motley collection of playing cards on her dressing table. Amidst the bottles and jars of the others there might have been one full deck. "Know any 7-card?"

***

The set-up was a strange one indeed; Madeleine still poised on the brink of performance in swelling black and flowing green, full stage makeup touched and passable under the mess of scarlet hair that had been taken up and down to the point of surrender. Her top-hat she had disposed of, now it lay upon the frizzed curls of the girls beside her, resting on the blue robe and dealing out onto the upended chair. One card was bent roughly and many scratched patterns; obscene and benign, graced the backs.

"Gin," Madeleine announced, "heya, Champ."

She threw her arm around his shoulder and cards scattered from her lap onto the rumpled street clothes underneath.

"What are you doing?"

"Teaching little sis here a poker face and a lion's roar. Let's get outta here. C'mon, Dine."

She snapped her fingers as if calling some faithful stray. Obligation or command, she jumped to her feet and went to her brother's side. Madeleine, thus entwined, lingered in her brief farewell.

"The kid's got talent, Champ," her voice was deceptively breezy in undertone, "Keep Mae's hands off, I'll take her on, there's a height call downtown with this real sweet director I know…"

"Mad, do us a favor, keep your crotch outta the Onyx staff's faces for a few months, yeah? The kid's barely fourteen."

"Yeah, and then she'll be fifteen, and then sixteen and what's your excuse then, Champ? Just your own damn pride. I'd say it came with the territory, but Mae's got it too. Fuck monogamy, Ed. No sense in throwing in your will with your wife along with your lot and life. Mae's not gonna do shit to help that kid break in because she can't stand to get upstaged when she's front and center. So let me start the kid out in the wings. That's where the talent scouting starts, anyway. And I hate to break it to you, but it'd be nice to have a third performer's salary in that flat."

Her rare moment of tact and feminine wisdom earned a reprieve and indeed a contemplation from this, her close friend and fellow graceful has-been who shared her healthy contempt for everything Vaudeville.

"Y'know, when we were onstage before she started talking about Mae. Said Mae's theater was her home away from home."

"What d'you think?"

"I think, Champ, that New York, New York and its spawn are all goin' to Hell. And we're driving the bus."

"Amen to that."

Ahead of them by a few paces, oblivious to these, her good-natured messengers of doom, Nadine danced on.


	4. Obligation

A/N: Once again: Eddie, Nadine, Mae, Madeleine, Kate, the implied Jackie, the mentioned Queenie, Phil, Oscar and his boycrush belong to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa. Cameo-OC's belong to me.

A Note of explanation: In a separate piece I am writing for Madeleine, she was raised in a suburb of Chicago, where her mother, Maggie, owned a bar. She left for New York City when she was 15. Hence her awkwardness about going to tour there. Please review.

* * *

It was a week after that meeting that Eddie and Nadine returned to Manhattan. Madeleine True was called away again, this time to Chicago. Why the assignment made her brisk and pale, her protégée didn't know, but certainly a change had come over her. She felt vaguely restless, melancholy. It was her age, and Chicago was almost a home. She put her life in perspective, and like most women, didn't wish on her childhood self what she saw now.

Harper Greene-angel, a stripper in a fine beaded disguise, traveled with her all the same. To Mae, any escape was welcome. She tagged along. Isaac, Harper's husband, went his own way with the men. Their daughter Suzanne, caught in the vacuum between the two, went with her mother, dreaming all the while that her home was not of this earth.

On their return to New York, Eddie went to the track with Oscar Caligheri. Only before they did, Oscar asked to meet her.

He had a sweet smile, she thought, genuine and potent. There was something very earnest about him. He took her hand when she offered it, spread the first two fingers, bending each back and forth and over the other. He closed her hand, folding it into her palm and letting go. As he reached the door, almost as an afterthought he asked her, "What do you play?" He was watching her eyes.

Startled, repeating the question, "Piano?"

The smile reappeared like a flame, "Knew it. You've got the build, doesn't she?"

"Sure." Eddie was putting on his coat, and he smiled toward the door. No matter, for the smile was meant for the girl, and she knew it.

"No," Oscar protested, touching his arm, "No, look at her," He tried to lead him forward. Eddie yanked it free.

"Nice guy," the girl would tell Eddie when he got home.

"Oh, sure." Eddie was hanging up his coat, "A little crazy, but a good guy all the same."

"Is he the-?"

"What? The queer?" He gave her a vague, what-have-you sort of gesture, "Best not mention that's how he was introduced. He prefers the bard and messenger of music."

Nadine laughed, "What about the future of a dying art?"

"I'll tell him. C'mere." He pulled her arm, lifted her up and embraced, "He's got a show coming up. I'll take you, if you want."

It was a gentle, glowing moment, in which he wished he could say _hold on, it's all over soon_. But he couldn't, so instead he took a pack of Madeleine's cards from his coat and promised he'd drink tomorrow. He sat next to her and she, a better storyteller than poker player, made up her history until she fell asleep.

***

Kate Shoshina was beauty in ebony. Liquid hands, sharp, shining nails, black dress up around her thighs, she was just shy of vulgar. It was a certain arrogance or class in her movements that granted her this advantage. And this advantage made all the difference. She was smoking on the street corner, hand on her hip. Eddie slipped his arm through hers, "Shiva."

"Hey stranger," she said this without looking at him, smiling at the corner of her mouth. She tapped the ash off her cigarette. They watched in silence a hearse drive slowly down the main road, a small trundle of lit cars following it into the morning mist. "I love a parade," she said dryly, nodding up the street "Wife at home?"

"Chicago."

"Shame." Distractedly smoking, considering what he wanted to offer her, and what she could offer him without sacrifice. Abruptly she set off, slipping her arm out of his reach, casting back a smile or two at her admirer as she led him home He followed the shadow of her, shimmering like the rain on the concrete, like gold dust. Fool's gold, he followed her to his home, the bed he shared with his wife, numb to sound, to time, to place.

Kate had a certain contempt for every man she had ever been with, at her theater, among her adoring public, wrapped in the sheets and the confusion of limbs. It was deeply tedious, the sex, when it came as something owed. Which is why she always made them wait, buy her dinner, buy her diamonds if they could. Made them pay.

It hadn't always been so. Kate, sleek now, displayed feline battle scars and was determined not to be ashamed of them. Like Eddie, she knew that dealing the blows could only bring you pride if you could take what you gave. And, better, if you could come through fighting.

The sex, long from being something owed, was now a matter of routine, a matter of sickening comraderie. Eddie was more constantly aware of his race than she. Felt it more poignantly. Dragged her to him out of desperation, some form of love, and deep, abiding, disbelieving envy. "The fastest legs in lights," he would say to her with a smile, taking her chin in his hand and looking long before he kissed her. Her headline had long ceased to be clever in his mouth. He sounded sad.

She put up with this. In her way, on her terms, she loved him. She conceded to the role of mistress, lower than an ex-chorine wife bleached to what she thought was beauty. She never found out if he was in love with her. She didn't want obligation, and so she didn't ask.

Now they lay between the sheets, hastily, minimally stripping though she'd been careful not to wear perfume. They changed, turned, neither and both on top. Chest hot through her black dress. Bodies together in stifling cold. Kate used him. He needed her.

It was a minute after it happened before she realized the door had opened, that a girl stood in the doorway for a fraction of a second before turning away. He hadn't noticed. She hadn't cared, and when he raised his head at her tension she shushed him, covered his mouth with hers. Maroon possibilities had flashed through her mind, but now again she thought of the absurdity of such an affair, the secrecy, the sex, the need for it at all. She was anxious to leave.

He wanted her to stay, but when at last she had coaxed herself out of his arms and left without a better look at the child who had interrupted them he, remembering her presence in his house, went into the next room and saw her. Pretending to read, ill-disguised and unreasonable betrayal emanating from her as he lingered, uncertain of how much he was responsible to heal. It seemed foolish to apologize, heartless not to. She was a child. Not his, to be sure, but his by obligation. _Obligation_. He resented the word. And when he thought of it, or thought of using it, it only made him resent her. It was painful.

Both knew they were being unfair. Both laid the blame on the woman who had run. Both knew it as they looked up at each other. It was understood, then, that neither would be angry with the other, or with themselves.

He would have gone then, as eye contact was broken, as she settled back against the wall, an open book against her knees. But he had to speak.

"Nadine," mouth dry. A vague, dry feeling of hatred as he spoke. Kate's dress had smelled of cigarette smoke. The smell lingered in the room, the sheets… Nadine was looking at him, waiting for him to speak. She knew what was coming. In practice, she would have no trouble obeying him. Conceptually, intellectually, she could have hated him.

_Who was that?_ She thought of asking. Eddie lingered still, awkwardly, selfishly hovering between request and command. He had the power to do neither, truly, for what did he know about her…?

Nadine stood up, closing the book, pulling down the hem of her skirt and brushing it free of dust. Convulsively he reached out to seat her, but she ducked under his arm and said, "Don't," she went to the door. "Don't worry. I won't tell." Comrade or charge, gratitude, necessity, or entitlement. He could not speak. "I'm going to see Madeleine," she told him, rather gently. _He should go with her_… _No,_ she said, _I'll be all right, I know where to find her_.

He oughtn't have let her go out on her own. But in truth, in part, he wanted to see how she fared. He didn't watch her go, silent in her black coat, face pale even with the stinging cold.

***

Timid footsteps, timid knocks. Madeleine was half-asleep, vaguely hungover, a bottle in her hand like a shotgun. Shivering next to her was a woman, blonde hair disheveled, the skin on the back of her hand torn up, ruptured, a scar on her wrist. Sally had crawled up next to her during the night. Now she had twisted Madeleine's coat around her shoulder. She was asleep, but just barely.

Now the knocks on the door grew louder. Sally, her bloody hand on Madeleine's chest, moaned at the noise and drew further into the coat. Madeleine, from long night's practice, took Sally in her arms, squeezed, rolled gently to the side. Sally lay still. Madeleine deposited her gently, surrendering the coat and covering her with it. She was careful to shut the bedroom door behind her.

The knocks were loud, ineffective, childish. Then they grew less frequent, discouraged. Madeleine opened the door without the chain lock.

"Hey, sunshine," Nadine slipped inside and rushed her, laying her head on her breast. Madeleine stroked her and was silent. She held her a moment, but when the edges of her vision remained blurred and indistinct she let her go, as gently as her lover, and guided her to a seat. She took the bottle from her coat. She poured what remained into the coffee. "Long night," she explained, without provocation. Her half-smile was tense. Nadine, her face pale, looked vaguely haunted. Madeleine only glanced at her. She didn't often look people in the eye. A sidelong glance was enough to tell her what she needed to know.

"Can I stay here awhile?" The question came abruptly. Nadine took the handle of the chipped mug and turned the cup around a ring in the table,

"I'm here 'till ten and open all night," Madeleine rubbed her eyes with the blue sleeve of her shirt, haphazardly buttoned over her black corset. The sleeve was fading, dried with too many tears. "Or isn't that what you meant?" Nadine drew her finger around the rim of the cup and was silent, "Chickadee," Silence. "What's he done?"

"Who?"

"The man who might have changed me. The ex-husband I never wanted. The guardian of all lost and twisted souls, himself in need of a jailer." The girl's lips twitched into a half-smile. "Thank the gods, I made her laugh." She took her jaw in her hand, rough but affectionate. "Tell me what the man's done, and I'll the determine the necessary punishment. Hot oil or the rack?"

This time she laughed. Weak, sputtering, and quickly stifled, but honest. Then Madeleine turned sober once more.

"He asked you not to tell, didn't he?" Once more, there was silence. "Sonuvabitch set up Taminy Ring in his own house?" Maggie's temper, rising in red veins. Oh, how she hated men. "Dine, you can tell me. Weigh your odds, I probably know already."

"There's a woman."

"Of course there is," and then she turned her back completely. Hating him, hating herself. Her hate was like man's, indistinct and formless. It made her unknowingly cruel to those she loved. Nadine often regretted opening up to her. There was a burning silence, then softly, half-smiling, "So what'd she look like?"

Nadine told her, hedgingly, haltingly, what she knew, and Madeleine nodded. Once, twice. "I know her," It was a cue to the girl. She should not ask questions.

Madeleine, once upon a time, had cherished a hope for Kate Shoshina. The hope was gone now. Kate had weakened herself to sex with women only in her greatest time of need. She preferred the control she had over men, who would never unravel her, never solve her, and never want to.

The hope was gone, but not the desire. Beyond lust, brief satisfaction, Madeleine craved intimacy, and this was why Kate despised her. Selfishly, Madeleine did not want to talk about her.

From the next room, there was a sharp, piercing cry, like that of a wounded animal. Madeleine rose, disappeared to Sally's bedside, panicked at the sound. Nadine, from the table, heard a struggle of indistinct words. Madeleine was enduring the woman's struggles. Sally was shivering, striking out at her, crying that she had warned the others about the fire…

Madeleine saw the girl watching from the doorway. She motioned wildly to the floor beside the bed. There was a needle there, just under the bedskirt. For days, she had kept it hidden. But now she filled it without question, without resistance, without protest. Later, when she was alone with the gin, Madeleine would curse the needle and give it her lover's name.

Now Sally cried in earnest. She turned her face into the mattress, hands tight to the back of her neck. She moaned, satisfied at a terrible price. Somewhere in these was Madeleine's name in long memory.

In Madeleine's face was a silent plea. She was weak in the face of the girl's blank, deadly shock. Told not to ask questions, Nadine would obey. Told to keep secrets, she would obey. But the world before her was changing.

Alone with her gin, Madeleine would feel for her. She would imagine how she grieved her parents, feared and loved the city, hurt from trust and confidences and shame. She projected idle empathy, and remained still and alone. _Poor child_, she would think. Then her mind would drift to morphine. How much was left, how much was needed, how much she could afford, and how much she could give to satisfy a burning conscience and the childish, invalid pleas of her lover.

***

The first fights she'd witnessed had been about women. Many of them were. It was not painful to stay silent about what she knew, but rather about what she didn't.

This fight was different. Poison directed at Mae; about a man. Nadine did not know him. She caught curses, hurled at his wife at close range because he feared the reality of his own infidelity. He seized her by the arms and pushed her to the wall. The girl pictured Mae's eyes, the determined curl of her lip, her disheveled, eye-to-eye guilt, but neither sister made a sound. Eddie did all the talking for them, in absence of a denial.

As they fought he put a hand between her legs and shouted who'd been fucking her in Chicago and he yelled this man's name at her over and over…_Jackie…Jackie…Jackie…_

It wasn't until the end that she heard skin against skin, force meant to injure rather than move. Punishment rather than fear used to get an answer. At last Mae screamed, calling him a bastard and a coward and when he struck her again she took a bottle from the floor, threw it so it shattered against the wall. And then she ran. Eddie did not go after her. She was bleeding already. Time would do the rest.

He felt deeply sick. Though she had screamed names at him, he wished she would have dared to realize Kate Shoshina was among them. He could have denied it, and that alone would take away some of the strange suffering. For all her protests, he was still deceiving her.

Shortly, he heard the door slam again. The girl had gone past him slowly. He'd not seen her go, though he saw why she would.

Out in the street, she had nowhere to go. Madeleine had gone again to Chicago. She had further business in the suburbs of the windy city. Nadine saw her sister's outline in the distance two blocks away. Arm-and-arm with Harper Greene-angel, who spat onto a handkerchief and held it to Mae's eye. Mae slapped away her hand, only marginally grateful for her sympathy. She merely wanted a soundboard for her revenge.

Wildly, without knowing why she thought it, Nadine found herself hoping Harper's daughter Suzanne was in the back rows of the Bowery somewhere, kissing a boy she danced with, never once thinking of when it would be over and she would have to face her mother again.


	5. Choice

A/N: I still own nothing. Everyone you recognize belongs to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa. The long-awaited appearance of Jackie and Queenie. ("Dead poet's honor" is _completely_ anachronistic, but it's staying.)

Several notes of explanation: (This is part of a much longer project under the working title _Stable Things_). Eddie and Madeleine have a sort of "backup" agreement with each other, since Madeleine wants to have a child. Her mother was gay, and her parents were friends who had the same sort of arrangement. Hence their scene later in this installment.

In another segment, it is explained that "Sunday Mornin' Blues" (which, incidentally, is property of Walter Marks), is Queenie's old standard, hence why she's pissed at Kate for stealing it.

In _yet another_ segment, Sally's story is that she was a nurse during WWI. She came out of it with very severe PTSS and a morphine addiction. Hence her crazy.

***

_Bring it on, boys_, the audience cheered. It was lucky they suspected as little as they did. Vaudeville was a largely respectable crowd. At best, one of the pair had been picked up in the street while the other was sleeping with the headliner. In the Bowery they knew better. Either way, Eddie ushered his charge through the backstage, into the wings. The brothers D'Armano faced them from stage left, one of the first on the program. A back-handed compliment, like the center stage girl in a chorus line, but they would take what they could get.

Kate Shoshina, the headliner, was on at midnight. Madeleine True, hurrying forward with her brown overcoat over her arm, placed herself deliberately close to the sightlines at stage left. She looked at Oscar Calighieri, matching his lover to the thread and waiting for his cue, and laughed. "Sunk to new depths you have, loverboy."

They clapped even as the boys counted off. Oscar smiled, Phil took no notice. "Late again," whispered Madeleine. They clapped as the song finished. Oscar took a four-bar encore and they laughed. Phil bowed stiffly, like a marionette, and took his leave. He was a small, dark, unpleasant-looking man. Professional to a fault, and caring nothing for the praise when he knew the result was imperfect. He was friendlier without the smile on his face that signaled danger.

He tried to shoulder Madeleine aside, out of the sightlines, into the wings. Madeleine stepped aside, seized his collar with both hands, lifted him a few inches or so off the woodwork, and moved him past her. Phil stumbled, casting her a furious look. Then he checked himself, turning toward the opaque curtain and storming off, snapping his fingers as he went. Oscar gave Madeleine a sorry, what-did-you-expect sort of smile, gave her a fleeting wave, and went behind the backstage curtain. From where she stood, Madeleine saw him greeted by the girl and her sister. He took the girl's hand and kissed it. Mae, vaguely jealous, stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He took it, and graciously, but blew her a kiss instead.

There was a man in the front of the house, on the aisle, clapping with vague derision while a woman beside him whistled. Blond hair, dark suit, contrasted with the white dress of the woman who leaned back to kiss his jaw. Madeleine's breath came out in a hiss, _Jackie_…

There was a ringmaster man, with his wife the beautiful statue, which the woman in white cheered ironically. There was Isaac Greene-angel's accordion, and there was a young girl Suzanne's age, who borrowed her brother's suit for impersonations, holding an imaginary glass. Then there was Her Honor, presented as such by the emcee. She Who Is…Kate Shoshina. The woman in white jeered good-naturedly. Kate's deep, curled lip was all the retort she needed. Purring, she ascended the piano.

The dusky introduction music sent a cool stir through the audience. The woman in white's scarlet mouth worked a moment in silence, and then thinned to one, furious line of recognition.

"_The Sunday mornin' blues,"_ Kate's voice wandered, like the music, disregarding the listeners, but hooking them in. They would follow her, _"Ain't nothin' as bad as the Sunday mornin' blues. When Saturday's child must pay her dues…"_ Her voice was the trumpet, the piano, the drifting chords. She had her debts to pay.

"_Night, you thought you could win, but then mornin' came in, sayin' 'Baby, you lose…'" _It wasn't until the bridge that the woman in white needed restraint, but clearly Kate Shoshina noticed. Leaning back on the piano, she flipped her fingers under her chin, languidly enough to be considered a kiss by her admirers, and a curse to her rivals. She was in no hurry. Madeleine smiled, knowing this look across the floodlights would not be the end of it. _"It's funny, it's really funny, how in the moonlight every dream seems real. But when it's sunny, I tell ya, honey." _There was a sharp pause. Unknowingly, her eyes found Suzanne Greene-angel. _"You wake from the dream…"_ And then to all the world, all the stage, giving voice to a clawing dream, _"And begin the nightmare!"_

Deep in the distance, the audience saw a figure in black, aimless and wild, and beautiful.

"Happy Sunday mornin' to you." Dry, grim, abrupt, a moment of silence, then she lowered her head into the spotlight. She snapped her fingers. The piano, the trumpet picked up. And she flew. The audience roared. The woman in white stamped her foot to the beat, vowed revenge, poured her heart out into the music. She dragged Jackie's arm around her when they started to chant her name, saying 'I know a better way'.

"We used to dance together, me and her." Mae would tell the girls backstage, claiming credit in self-justification. All assumed it was Kate's fame, not Mae's disgrace that separated them. It didn't matter, really.

None of their crowd went nearer to Kate Shoshina in early morning than the ominous, ten-foot circle that had formed around the dressing room. The woman in white had gone behind the woodwork to claim what was rightfully hers. But,

"A song does not belong to the singer. The singer belongs to the song." This came from Madeleine, who marked the barrier with folded arms and a smile. Between acceptable and unacceptable. Unashamedly so. Kate's voice was a low cat's growl, her guest's voice grew shriller and shriller with every passing word. Their argument was the sound of chaos, all contrast. No conventional beauty. Eddie reached through the bystanders and took Nadine's arm. She turned to him.

"I want to see."

"Trust me. You don't."

There was, of course, another reason why he was anxious to go, but Mae was not watching him. She had just seen Jackie in the wing, watching the fight with dry interest, waiting for the woman in white.

The three of them left Madeleine by the curtain of the dressing room, likewise listening to the fight with a base interest in how Kate Shoshina looked when she was angry.

***

"Who's Jackie?" It was the next question she asked Madeleine True when they spoke.

Madeleine choked, got up, went to her storage. Flatly, she told the girl over her shoulder, "There's no liquor in the universe strong enough for this conversation." Not to say she didn't try, "Out of sheer, self-loathing curiosity, why do you ask?"

"No reason."

"Uh-huh." Even deeply skeptical, she wouldn't ask. She knew the caregiver she was dealing with, "Hopefully, love, you'll never have to meet him. If you do, just keep your mouth shut. If he's got no audience he'll soon leave you alone."

"But _who_ is he?" characteristic persistence.

_To tell the truth, I'm not eager to find out._ "He used to perform with your sister. He's got a sheet of broken hearts a mile long. All that gives him satisfaction in this life is to spread mayhem and loss. I'm serious, Nadine," for the girl had opened her mouth to speak, "you don't want to know any more than that. Just steer clear. We'll all rest easier for it."

_Poor child._ She thought again as she left Nadine to her silence. Unsatisfied, but safe yet. Sheltered.

_***_

If Jackie lit up after the sex, it meant he was staying, at least for a little while. It meant Oscar could touch him, put his head on his shoulder or his leg on his. He'd been told by lovers before Jackie that he was too much like a woman. Nonetheless, he took the cigarette he was offered.

"You and your scathingly brilliant ideas." He said to him one afternoon. Phil was at the theater, negotiating the lease of a piano they could never afford. It made him feel important, to bargain. "You always wind up getting me in trouble."

"No, I've got it this time, I promise." Dangerous words, from his mouth.

"You and your promises…What time is it?"

"Let me worry about that. Fair warning. Dead poets' honor."

"_What?_"

"Forget it." Stroke of a flame in a silver lighter. "You could get him drunk."

"The man takes up half the fuckin' room without trying, how many shots do you think we'd need before he couldn't tell me from Shiva? A few hundred, maybe? I ain't the time or the patience to put that scheme in motion. Not to mention the money, 'cause we're not talkin' the cheap stuff, we're talkin' hard-core diamond-in-the-rough liquor."

"I'd love to see you act on a selfish impulse once before you die. Just _once_ is all I ask."

"And what?" A smile, a breath of smoke, "End up like you?"

A smile, quick, vague offense. "There are worse ends you could meet. If you don't, you might discover you haven't lived at all."

"True enough." A pause, smoke filling the breath between thoughts. "Why are you helping me, again?"

"What did I just say?"

"What about Phil?"

"What about Phil? He'd fuck Queenie if she'd let him. More importantly, so long as Burrs wouldn't find out. He can't exactly blame you. Come on, just put it in motion, no collateral next time."

"Meaning you'd fuck me for free if I got Eddie Mackrel to fuck me?"

"Meaning I'd fuck you for free if you made the offer under false pretenses. You see, then the acceptance is immaterial. You have the thrill of the lie and the thrill of the fantasy itself. It's a very powerful aphrodisiac."

"Mmm." There was a brief lull, when Oscar considered coming home to him after such a meeting. He said something he imagined was very deep then. "Sometimes, I think the point is just to get out alive."

"Vain and hopeless hero's quest, darling. No one ever gets out of love alive."

"Were you always this cynical?"

"Only since I started fucking Phil. If I can be of any help in your latest escapade, do let me know. I'd be a wonderful distraction."

"He'd kill you."

"Oh, ye of little faith." Snapping the lighter closed, he got up from the shared bed. Oscar rolled over into where he'd lain. He knew he was going to meet Phil, though he didn't say as much.

_***_

_Hold me…_Sally had disappeared that morning, with the handful of money Madeleine would have used to buy her morphine. She could guess where she had gone, but not when or if she would come back.

It was why she came to Eddie's house at some obscene hour in the spring morning. He was still awake, a pack of cards spread onto the table, the girl asleep over her hand, he watching her and looking through her. Madeleine knocked only once, her whole body against the wood door. She was drunk, and Eddie knew it, though not many others would have.

"What's she doing there?"

"She won't wake up." He assured her. Madeleine pitched forward over his chair, hands clenching at the back of it, forehead against his jaw. "She's gone." She whispered, "Fucking Christ, she's gone…she _gone…_" She struck her fist against his knee.

_Maudlin Madeleine_, Burrs had called her once, drunk, clear-sighted, in a moment of cruelty, _sugar sweet, sell her cunt for a dime on the street. Maudlin Madeleine, hands can't be beat, beggin' for love like a cat in heat…_ Madeleine, swaying, had gotten up from the floor where she lay with a woman, a one-night stand, and decked him out flat. Burrs, head spinning and dizzy from the blood, had just lain there and laughed. 'Crazy fucker. Never liked him.' She shrugged, and, her girl falling asleep, Madeleine had nudged her awake and left with Eddie, trusting her to come to her senses before long.

This was years ago, before Eddie and Mae were together, when she was just 'some broad, blonde, voice got on my nerves'. He tried to remember her as brash and swaggering and truly careless. But now she was careless in love, and it was killing her. _Two of a kind, you and me_, he'd told her, and it was true again.

"She been gone awhile?"

"This morning…no…no…" She grabbed his shirt with both hands, "Eddie…it's a year now…it's five years…ten…_Christ_ I wish she hadn't gone…I swear she'd 'a never come back like that…"

He'd never met her, the girl Madeleine loved. She made sure of that, cared for her in secret. Restive, last night, Madeleine had covered Sally in her coat, kissed her eyes, but Sally had beaten her back, stayed silent as though listening to a command and then murmured, 'Yes, sir…'

"Eddie…" she pleaded, holding onto his shirt in desperation, "Eddie, I knew her before the war. And when she came back she left me…but I saw her again a year ago, and everything was wrong…and I just wanted her _back_, you know? I wanted to…I wanted to get her back like I knew her…" She dropped her head against the back of the chair. "I can't sleep."

"C'mon, sit down." He took her shoulders.

"Eddie, I want a baby."

"Shhh. C'mon, that ain't gonna fix anything."

"I want a baby. I'll always have somebody to go home to."

"Have a drink. Let's have a drink…" It was the only way to deal with her when she was this far-gone. Give her something familiar, and let her sleep. Madeleine sank to the floor and inched closer to the girl, asleep on the floor. She reached out and rubbed her back in a gentle circle. She looked up at Eddie, who was nudging her with his foot, holding out a glass of gin. Her voice sounded broken.

"Ah, lemme take her, Eddie."

"Mad."

"She's almost grown but I'll be good to her…" she lifted Nadine off the table and laid her head in her lap. She stroked her hair and gazed down at her face wistfully and looked, for a moment, the perfect mother. Nadine, in her sleep, clutched Madeleine's legs. A perfect daughter. Perfect. It made Eddie burn.

"Don't make it sound so simple, Mad, she's got people lookin' for her…"

"_Who?_" And now she sounded angry, with tears in her voice. "Got any letters? Any follow-up? Anyone coming to your door saying you ain't allowed to raise this child? If anyone cared they'd've come already, they sent this girl to Manhattan and left her here to die…"

"Shut up."

"Eddie," she was getting fraught. Frantic. Grasping at straws, at words, at anything. "Eddie, she doesn't owe you anything more than me…"

"_Shut up._"

"She doesn't and you know!" She started then, because Nadine was stirring. Madeleine stroked her hair feverishly, trying to calm her back into sleep. "She won't until you leave that shitrag she calls kin and you call your wife." By now Nadine was awake, hands on Madeleine's leg as Madeleine put her arms around her. Eddie would have hit her, were he anything but sober. He held off. Madeleine stood, slowly. Their fighting dissipated into curses, and she soon left. Nadine, making her choice as soon as Eddie lowered himself to threats, followed her.

She came back, of course, late in the night. Shaking him half-awake, wild-eyed, telling him there was a man in the street who'd asked her price. She'd run as fast as she could, all the way home. She cried into his chest where he lay, his arm trapped under her sister's scant waist. She pulled his hand into her hair. "She's kind to me. She's teaching me music." she protested, gently. Eddie traced the new, clean plait in her neglected hair. She looked over at Mae, who breathed heavily on her side of the small bed. Then, quietly, "Don't leave her. Oh my God, Eddie, don't leave her." She sank down against the window-sill, then, and fell asleep. And he knew, clearly, he couldn't, without knowing, clearly, if she'd meant Madeleine or Mae. He would let her think it was for her, because of her, that he made the choice.


	6. First taste

A/N: Guess who doesn't own the beautifully tragic souls? Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa own all canon characters. Harper Greene-angel and the cameo landlord belong to me. The section in italics is in Nadine's POV.

* * *

Going hesitantly through the doors of the theater, Oscar saw the baby grand on the side of the stage, half-covered by the moth-eaten grand drape. Phil had put his money on the floor beside him. From the chest up he was immersed in the piano's inner workings, tuning here and fiddling there and adjusting this and that. He had a very distracted, scientific air about him, an attitude musicians adopted to govern their emotions and their awe.

Phil did not want to seem impressed with the piano. It was the best they could ever afford and more, but in truth, not the best they deserved. Phil was looking for flaws, reasons to complain, but when he began to play in earnest he would forgive every one of them. The money he put down was half the asking price.

"Won't go any lower." The landlord warned, but he turned away, ready to come back with a better offer. Phil slid out from under the piano.

"Hey there." Oscar bent down, nudged him.

"Hey." Phil said it softly. He put a hand behind Oscar's head and kissed him, rapidly, on the cheek. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Likewise. You should sleep once in awhile." He put out a hand to pull him up. Phil pushed it aside. "Cold."

"Not here."

Oscar changed the subject. "She's nice."

"He's asking three hundred."

Oscar reached out a hand, stroked the surface. Phil gave him a hard, disapproving look. He was nervous. Tense. "Dusty." Oscar muttered, excusing himself. He looked down.

"Bad out of tune." Phil told him.

"Doesn't matter. We could do two."

"Don't let on." He warned. In actuality, they couldn't. Half of the money he had beside him on the woodwork he'd gotten from Jackie the night before. The other half he'd stolen.

Oscar shrugged. "What's your offer?"

"One-fifty." His lover made a noncommittal noise in his throat. "Listen, though, there's good news. We've got an offer for tomorrow night.

"Joe's?"

"Nah, somewhere new. Shiva put it a good word for us." He'd never seen Phil trying so hard not to look excited. There was a strangled light around him, in his eyes and in his hands as he worked to tune the piano, which was slow to yield. Each new instrument was a new love affair. The two of them understood this, accepted it.

"We're moving up."

"Yeah." He smiled down at the keys. "Yeah, baby, we're moving up." His hands trembled a little. He was going to see Jackie later that night. They didn't need charity. He'd see. They were headed for the lights.

The landlord came back, briskly, clapping his hands together, "You have to go. No sale today." Broken English, eyes down, imitating contempt.

"What changed your mind?" Oscar asked. Phil waved him aside. He wanted no questions asked. The man's eyes narrowed as they turned to go. Phil, though he could prove nothing, left the theater in high temper.

***

I'd held my breath that whole morning. Mae had Harper Greene-angel come over for coffee and they'd poured gin into the icebox, waited for it to chill, then put their heads under the surface of the melted ice, drenching their hair with it, their makeup running, the two women laughing in that grating, echoing way that reminded me of rocks dropped into a manhole or a dark cavern, hitting the ground with a sickening crash that lets you know just how far you stand to fall…Then all of a sudden Mae was standing, paper in hand, waving the stifling air onto her face, beckoning the man in the doorway.

"Boyfriend!" _Mae called, "Tell me good news, babydoll?"_

"_4__th__ and Broadway, girlfriend." He obliged._

"_Tonight?"_

"_Sure. Eddie!"_

"_I'll tell him, honey." Mae took his arm and yanked him toward the icebox. Then, as Eddie came out, "Hey, Champ, care to do the honors?" They forced his head into the gin and sweating ice, all three of them together. Oscar came up spluttering it, in his eyes, in his throat, in his hair, Eddie's arm round his neck. Mae, soaked to the skin down to her shoulders, kissed him then, and laughed. He jerked away. "Aww, doll, I'm just playing with ya." She protested, "All in good fun, yeah?"_

"_Yeah." There was nothing he could do to get her back. If he'd knelt down and got her by the arms and shoved her back into the icebox she'd never get the irony of it all. She'd drown in the gin and never think twice. I squatted down next to the ice, the air was still and we'd been complaining about the heat all morning. But Harper was pointing at me now._

"_Hey, kid." She said to me. It was cruel in its own right. She knew my name, and chose not to use it. "Had your first taste of victory yet?" I didn't answer._

"_Cat got your tongue, sweetie?"_

_Harper turned back to Mae. "Her parents taught her 'little girls ought to be seen and not heard', didn't they, Na-di-a?" Clearly annunciating each syllable. She whispered in Mae's ear. Mae gave another hateful, appreciative laugh._

_It had taken me the better part of eight months to realize I hated her. I'm sure it's wrong, somewhere in the law that's supposed to be engraved on the hearts of all good men and all good girls. That's how they talked to us in my school. To the nuns, we were and would always be girls. First and foremost. I didn't want to be a good girl anymore, I thought. I wanted to live. _

"_Get her head under." Harper was saying, black eyes on mine, laughing, and Mae was on me too, yanking my arm up my back, while Harper moved like lightning to get my hair. "I christen thee in the name of Dionysis the great and all-knowing. Drink, fuck, and be merry."_

_The gin was vaguely sweet, laced with the salt of sweat and soap. But it burned on the way down, that much I remember. It was only a few seconds before Oscar made them let me up._

"_You bitch!" I gasped it out with a shallow breath, aiming it for Harper because it had been her idea, and because there would be no consequences from her. And the silence rang._

"_Your sister's lacking manners, Mae."_

"_Now, Na-di-a," Mae said slowly, mimicking whatever insult Harper had given her for ammunition. "I know you didn't mean to insult my friend."_

"_I know you didn't mean to insult me." Mirrored Harper, "You want us to put you back in? Give us a slap when you want to take it back?"_

"_Lay off." Oscar told Mae, quietly. It was remarkable how her stare burned. How she looked for fuel for a deep-curled lip and that martyred look in her eyes. I would never pity her, no matter what she said about our mother and father. _

_Mae seemed to decide I wasn't worth it. She got up from her knees, a few unapologetic, deeply shameful tears in her stockings. "Coming to Queenie's tonight?" She asked her friend._

"_Can't." said Harper, clean and cold once more. "Suzanne's got a show. Isaac's laid up."_

"_What with?"_

"_He's a man. Who knows." _

_Oscar pushed my hair off my face._

"_Y'okay?"_

"_I wish she would go drown herself." I whispered to him. He nodded._

"_We're playing tonight, doll." He told me, "Think you'll really like it. Maybe if you come a little early you can help us practice." He was joking, of course. What was strange is no one ever expected that I wouldn't go. It was taken as a matter of course that I was coming with them, that I would be thrilled. And God save me, I was. _

***

"You gotta wait on Madeleine, Dine." Eddie told her, cuffing her cheek. "I don't know jack about this sorta thing." Legs crossed, still in her black day dress, she lay back on the bed. Madeleine was coming over. They'd made up, so to speak, and like most men, quickly forgot it had ever been otherwise.

"_Get in, ya sad excuse for livin'. Jesus, Champ, you'd drink me under the table. Swear, you put me to shame." Madeleine had seized him by the collar, pulled him inside. He hadn't been terribly drunk. Just enough to be introspective, and sorry._

"_I ain't really gonna shoot ya, Mad." He'd caught her face in his hands and given her a kiss. _

"_And I ain't really gonna shoot your wife." She'd ducked away from him. "Take it easy, jackass. I know."_

"_I wanna help you, Mad."_

"_I know, honey."_

"_Swear it two times?"_

"_Swear it two times."_

_He'd offered to fuck her, if she really wanted what she said she wanted. She'd given him a strange, sad laugh. "Sally wouldn't like it."_

"_She back?"_

"_Yessir. Found her in the dressing room."_

"_When?"_

"_Two nights ago." He'd told her about Queenie's party. She was coming. She hesitated a minute, then said. "I'm taking her with me, what you think?"_

Now her voice rang through the doorway. Mae was already outside, yelling that she'd leave without them. Madeleine clapped Eddie on the shoulder. "Hey, angel." Madeleine slid down behind her. She twirled her finger for Eddie to turn his back, lifted the girl out of the black dress, took a corset out of her own. It was, likewise, jet-black. Not structured, fitted like the iron maidens of decades past, but soft, like lingerie.

Nadine sat up, prim and stock still, like a mannequin, while Madeleine laced her up. Nadine barely felt it. "I've gone numb." She whispered.

"Just breathe." She put her hands over the girl's eyes, started to croon softly in her ear. _"There's nothin' wrong with wherever you came from, that one night in Manhattan wouldn't cure…"_

"So give me just one more night in the city of lights, 'cause I've never felt half as glamorous…"

"_Half as sure."_ Madeleine picked her up by the arms and tossed her to the floor. "The night is yours for the taking, my dear." She stole a dress from Mae's closet, a calico wrap from her thinner years, black flowers sealing the middle, circling the waist like vines. Not particularly flattering, but the only thing that might fit her. Mae's lips went white at the sight of it, but there wasn't anything she could say.

"What will they want from me?" she mused, as they walked, down through the slums, watching the numbers lessen in refinement, grow in potency.

"Whatever you're willing to give." Madeleine was vaguely serious. "Remember what I told you, baby. Now go on, I'll meet you there. I'll talk you through the smooth-talking once we get there. 'Cause let me tell you, angel, there's a big difference between doing something and talking about it. If there's anyone there who really can make you a star, you'll hear about it from me."

"Really?"

"Trust me." She turned back to her apartment, with a slightly resigned look on her face. Sally would not have changed, would not have shot up, would not have known how. She might have reconsidered bringing her, but for the fear of what she might do without her, alone but for the nightmares.

Mae, who'd been ignoring the girl the rest of the day, turned now to watch Madeleine and Eddie hang by her apartment door. She turned to her sister, hard flint eyes and smile.

"You don't know what you're getting into. Never been fucked by a man, have you, little girl?" Nadine kept walking, turning into a right-hand circle as she waited for Eddie to return. "Never even been _kissed_, have you?"

"Have so." She held out her arms to balance on the curb.

It was almost true. The day she turned thirteen her father had held a piano recital for her, showing her off was his only way of showing pride. A group of boys from the city next door had come, and as they left, Ishmael, eighteen then, had taken her just behind their house, and gotten on one knee. 'Marry me?' he'd asked her, jokingly, and she'd jokingly told him, 'Of course.' He'd kissed her, gently, a peck on the lips only. 'Don't tell.' He'd laughed, and disappeared.

She didn't tell any of this to Mae, of course, for she knew what she'd meant. A rutting kiss, violent with passion, punctuation to the sex. Mae saw the vague, white lie. "Never been _wanted_ like we have…" she began. There was a certain whiplash to her insults now. She began to wonder. But-

"Shut up." Her sister told her, clearly, calmly. Mae seized her arm as she kept walking.

"You'll get yourself run over."

"Like you care." Nadine murmured. Mae turned her loose.

"It'll happen." She whispered, softly, stung. "Soon. Short and bittersweet, it'll happen." Her words scared her, but then Eddie was back with them, hand at the back of Nadine's neck, leading her gently. She remembered Madeleine's words: _The night is yours for the taking…_

She was almost brave enough to step around Eddie and slap Mae across the face. Almost, but not quite.

* * *

Secondary A/N: This section gets us up to canon. The next (and last) chapter describes the aftermath of Queenie's party, at which Nadine is raped by one of the guests. (See _After Midnight Dies_ for a more complete explanation).


	7. Crash

A/N: Last chapter. Since there are only a few people reading this, I'm going to assume you all know what happens to Nadine at Queenie's party. This first bit is in Eddie's point of view, following that horrific, hedonistic mess. The rest is in third-person.

____________________________

She stopped. Blocks and blocks ago. A few minutes, ten, twenty, a half hour. Mae's watch stopped before we even got to Queenie's and she let it lie there, ticking, a few feet to the door with her frock and a bottle of gin. Close to empty, lying on its side, gin leaking out the top and spreading like kerosene, a couple drops like sweat on the rim of the bottle.

Mae looked back as we were leaving. Watching him on the fire escape, broken up and holding Sally's waist and it seemed like everybody was looking back, looking for someone or something to keep moving towards. Mae for him and him for Queenie and Queenie for Black and Mad for Sally…except Sally had nobody.

God, I never saw Mad like that. Never seen her look so lost, like a kid. Maybe that ain't true… a couple weeks before the party Sally ran away… She kept after Sally long after she left off the fire escape with him. But Sally never looked back. Only ever saw ahead. Never batted an eye, not even when Mad screamed for her. Anyone ever said my name like she said Sally's would've meant something to me.

Maybe they deserved each other.

Pressing dark outside, dying dark. Thrill of getting lost gone. You worry about getting found. And I couldn't see straight so Mae had to go ahead, and the kid stayed with me, crying like she did when she first came to us, and trying everything not to show it. Not to Mae or me. She made herself stop, like she was scared, like she was to blame.

She let Mae scout ahead in blind territory, put her arm around me right where I went down, fingers trembling like she was scared I'd push her off me. Put her head on my chest, riding on my steps like she always did, when she was trying to keep up or when she was falling asleep. Let me pick her up when we got to our own street. "No one's coming, right Eddie, no one's coming." Voice blurred and heavy.

"No one's coming, baby."

Pitch black and grey in the apartment, grey and dead and breaking down, breaking apart. I thought Dine was asleep, but she wasn't any heavier for it. Curled up, head on my chest, trying not to cause anybody any trouble.

"Come to bed, honey." Mae was saying, quiet and husky. She reached out to her sister like she'd stroke her hair but Dine winced away. Mae's hand dropped like she'd been burned.

"Lemme put her down to rest." We tried to make it about her. Then we could see ahead. But it couldn't stay like that forever. She balled up on her bed, crushed with guilt, but she wasn't asleep, not all the way.

A curl caught on my shirt. She stirred, reached up, wouldn't let me go, ragged nails on skin, started whispering, swallowing up the words, arms limp, _"…love you."_ Forced out, sleeping with her eyes open. Tried to drag her off, lay her down, but she wouldn't keep still. _"No…no…don't lie down, don't…"_

Picked her up again, kept strong for her sake. She was freezing, sweating in spite of herself, stirring a few minutes at a time, letting me shush her back to sleep. Not crying now, just scared, not knowing where she was.

Mae was leaning up against the door, watching us, "Might as well set her down for the night," Calm and cold, like a ghost, a shell of the woman who was my wife. If she thought I was listening she had another thing coming. I looked down at her hand, watched her slip the ring back into place. The mask slipped. She looked more a shell than ever. But familiar. A heartbeat, a pulse, a witness. I'd married her, chosen her, hadn't I?

"Lay her down, Eddie."

I couldn't let her sleep in Queenie's dress. She couldn't barely help me. I looked up at Mae, but she didn't move. Her eyes were green and grey and dead and helpless. _What are we gonna do?_ I didn't know. Heard somewhere you're not supposed to let the woman, the girl, wash up. You need something to show the cops. _Were we calling them?_

"Just leave her, Eddie," For all the world like it was my last chance. My wife was looking at the shivering kid: scared, cold, remote, lost, looking like she wanted to run and run and run and never look back. "C'mon, Eddie. Let's go to bed."

Not for the first time, I hated her saying that. Dine stirred a little, covered her head and moaned. Mae looked scared straight, tried to pull me up. I shook her off. She saw red before we could think, either of us, cutting us all because part of her was shaken, part of her was sorry.

"No time to go to bed with me 'cause my sister played with fire and got herself burned. Got to be first with everyone? Honey, he's fucked over more of us there than we want to remember and we've got reason to suffer. Got to be everybody's fucking martyr. Had to steal your heart all 'cause I wouldn't go back to cry over their goddamn coffins…" Mae slammed the wall, "Oh _godamnit…godamnit…_" Snarling out, sobbing, clawing at the tears, turning on me, "Dicking around with Kate behind my back, don't go on… Saw your new pound of flesh and took a dive?"

Red, everything red, everything dark, Mae screaming, a loop of the slap, the crash, the stir, the hard, stone laugh, it played over and over. The slam of the door. She went out, she'd come back. Twisted the knife and left us here to bleed.

I crawled back to the kid. She was on her knees, on the bed, up against the wall. Like a ghost in that white shift, Crying with her tears like ice, while I was bleeding on the floor. Dine bent over herself to reach me, not touching but near enough to. _You look like an angel…_

"_Eddie…Eddie…"_ she twisted her sheet round her hands and cried for me, "Eddie, I didn't tell her, I swear I didn't tell her…"

"Hush that, I know." Was all I managed.

"I was good… wasn't I? No wait…_wait…_" shrill cat's notes of panic, dress too tight for her heart, "Does she bleed? Does Mae bleed?" She rolled over on the bed, hands up, clutching at her legs, her knees, scratching at the skin to bring feeling, taking blood from between her legs, red fingertips to the side of her face, "Eddie…Eddie…it's so cold…." She was crying again, hands pulling, shaking, at her shift, the hand with blood held out for me.

I stood looking at her for a long time before I lay down next to her. Took her in my arms, in the sleeves of my coat. Drying blood on my arm as she wrapped the sheet, her hand, heart round my wrist where, months ago, she'd wrapped a red ribbon.

She shook like that for a long time, fear pulsing in her veins till sunrise when the rain started and she fell asleep at last. Mouth slack on my hands. It was about then she stopped bleeding, Queenie's frock loose over her shoulders. "Dine," She slipped awake, turned to her back, head on my heart. Hand where I went down. Gentle, healing. "Why didn't you let us help you…" She tightened up in my arms, not looking at me, breath and blood hot even in this chill.

"I keep secrets, Eddie," crushed, broken, by word, by silence, not by action. Dry sobs a room over. Mae'd come back to us, sleeping first, sleeping alone. Dine traced the threads in the skirt faster and faster, blinded. _Don't keep his secrets, baby. He doesn't care…_

"Eddie, please." She bent up in my arms and coughed, getting rid of the poison, "please don't say it.

She listened to Mae a room over. Not wanting me to choose, praying for the choice I'd made now, for her and in her favor. "I always…I always…" breath shuddering in. Cleaner, more easily held with every breath, a breath forward from the night, from a room and a darkness a city away. She looked out at the rain, "I always dreamed…I'd tell my sister about my wedding night." She pulled back in my arms, crying when she had nothing else to say or to regret.

I didn't know yet Mae and her cried for the same regret that night, into that morning, and it broke them for a long time after.

--

_Were we calling them?_ She'd asked him. Bitter mockery, crafted in layers from a grain of truth.

Who would believe them?

Nothing they'd seen would mean much of anything. They were drunk, all of them. It acted as a cover for the people they wanted to protect and as an excuse for ignoring the people they didn't. Eddie and Mae and their witnesses were spread like criminals throughout the city, and none of them very likely to talk to the cops. The only one who hadn't drank had no reputation to make her case, and besides, shook up as she was, liar that she was, she was no traitor. This, of course, meant Queenie, and not for their sake would she turn on Jackie. She might never forgive, but that was her affair.

Then there was the girl. That she was underage at a foreseeably chaotic, lace-and-leather-sheathed frenzy was their fault. That she'd _wanted_ to go was her own. Cause for a quiet reprimand, maybe, by the temperance officer that would surely oversee the hearing.

That she herself had been drinking was not a great offense in and of itself. Merely the result of the catalyst she and her guardians had provided. That she'd been high on cocaine, and here they would hedge on whose fault that truly was, perhaps less so, but still…how much could she really remember? And how much, more importantly, would she _want_ to remember? The law did not trust psychoanalysis, even then, and she had no case.

So she'd bled. It was a start. But not enough to prove it was as bad as they said it was. She'd been touched, no way to prove by whom. Violent, no doubt, but, and they would give her sorry looks, there was no way to be _sure _of these things. Poor girl, gone astray,

they would think, and might even touch her shoulder and imply that she, good Catholic girl that she was, should pray for forgiveness of her own soul.

What do you mean? She might have said. And here, the delicacies implied in their hostile stares over her shoulder would take bitter, poisonous form.

How strange that she'd been accompanied here only by this shadow, _you said she had a sister…?_ They would ask prying questions, learn whom he was married to, and then smile coldly, knowingly. They would note how the girl looked back at him when they asked her a question, noting the _atypical _tension between the two, and the _unusual _affection…

Their questioning would turn again to abuse. Then the two of them together would shut down. Nadine, though as a child taught to trust the police, put her faith in the law and in the authority of those around her, would abandon coached stability for instinctual safety. She would call the questioner an ugly name and go back into her brother's arms. And Eddie, compelled out with his dignity, would be given one single reminder that he had no right to bring suit against a white man.

And that would be that. They would not risk, Eddie decided, the reality of such an interrogation. Even once they'd finished at the station, investigations would be made, a background check on the child, perhaps, and if Eddie wanted to keep her they would have to disappear.

On Nadine's part, it was clear that she wanted to forget. Nothing about her was consistent any longer. She stayed motionless for days, staring out the window, not sleeping, not eating, not speaking to anyone. Mae said she was praying, and to leave her alone.

It was when the dry heaves started in the night, and she screamed in her sleep about broken glass and blood, that she started to disappear. For nights stretched longer and longer, until she didn't return at all. The first time she gave Eddie cause to worry, she was found on Madeleine's doorstep, waiting for the woman to return home for a day and a half, and finding no relief.

Then, drifting closer and closer to the Bowery, there were days when no one saw her, merely caught glimpses of her or fragments of speech. Eddie was reluctant to go near her. She knew the danger now, remotely, and childishly thought there was nothing worse waiting for her in those streets. The theater crowd, respectable older couples who remembered their children or young couples just beginning to dream took kindly to her, treating her like a waif, caring for her for a day, an hour, giving her money or kind words. The theater frenzy, in the wings and backstage, loved her all the more. She was base, quiet, and, when threatened, beautiful. She did what was asked of her, buying cigarettes for women mimicking Kate Shoshina's airs and tolerating their lovers' wandering eyes and hands, handing off makeup and perfume and trying not to choke. They insulted her, naturally enough, but their tongues softened.

Soon her presence, though not acknowledged, was something to be pitied, even spoiled. Within a month, a crewman on the curtain followed her backstage. Mona, the up-and-coming headliner, had set him on it, "Have fun with it, kid," She told her, when Nadine looked over her shoulder, "God knows you could use it." She gave her a sisterly push. Nadine was trapped. The crewman was young and unmarried, with greasy hair and uneven, necessary strength. He looked interested, but more expectant. He grabbed her hand, careless but not vulgar, wanting to get away from the other women. She knew a vague moment of calm when he took her behind the lights, behind the curtain.

"No one'll find us?" She asked him. He was bewildered, uncomfortable, already hiking up her dress.

"Huh?"

"Nothing." But she was afraid she'd cry. She covered her mouth and he, face over her shoulder against the flimsy wall, noticed nothing.

"I can usually tell." Mona was saying, offhand, to the woman curling her hair, "But her, I don't know. What d'you think?"

The woman shrugged, put the wax into Mona's hair to set the waves. It was when she came offstage, and found the girl against the wall, head on her drawn-up knees, pressed deep as if she were sleeping, that she explained the crewman had had grey eyes. And Mona had her answer.

***

We know a little too well what happened in the autumn of 1929. But the basic definitions and reaches of stability did not change very dramatically. Whose lives had been stable in old ways and luxury before the 20's, they took their revenge. Whose lives had been swept up the momentary, electric thrills promised by the decade, they took their fall.

It was lucky that Mae retained from her parents a deep, unexplainable hoarding tendency. Her mother, generations ago, had been Irish, and she had French from her father. Call it cultural adaptation to misfortune, if you will, but it came with a profound mistrust of the stock market, indeed of investments of any kind. Thus, she and her husband had little, if anything, to lose the day the whole nation seemed to cave in on itself. At the first, blunt strike, they swayed, stunned, and carried on.

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Secondary A/N: Jackie has grey eyes. You know, in case you care. Please review…


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